Christopher Steele's Other Report: A Murder In Washington
Source: Buzzfeed News
The author of the famous Trump dossier provided a secret report to the FBI asserting that RT founder Mikhail Lesin was bludgeoned to death by thugs hired by an oligarch close to Putin. Three other sources independently told the FBI the same basic story, contradicting the government’s finding that Lesin’s death was accidental.
Posted on March 27, 2018, at 9:50 a.m.
By Jason Leopold (BuzzFeed News Reporter) Anthony Cormier (BuzzFeed News Reporter) Heidi Blake (BuzzFeed News Investigations Editor) Tom Warren (Investigations Correspondent) Jane Bradley (Investigations Correspondent) Alex Campbell (Deputy UK Investigations Editor) Richard Holmes (Investigations Reporter)
The FBI possesses a secret report asserting that Vladimir Putin’s former media czar was beaten to death by hired thugs in Washington, DC — directly contradicting the US government’s official finding that Mikhail Lesin died by accident.
The report, according to four sources who have read all or parts of it, was written by the former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, who also wrote the famous dossier alleging that Russia had been “cultivating, supporting and assisting” Donald Trump. The bureau received his report while it was helping the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department investigate the Russian media baron’s death, the sources said.
FBI spokesperson Andrew Ames declined to confirm or deny the existence of the report and would not comment for this story. Steele's business partner, Chris Burrows, declined to comment on behalf of Steele and their company, Orbis Business Intelligence.
The new revelations come as concerns about Russia’s meddling in the West have intensified to a pitch not seen since the Cold War. Both the UK and the US have blamed the Kremlin for poisoning former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England this month, using a rare nerve agent that endangered bystanders. (Russia has denied it was behind the poisoning.) In the wake of that attack, the British government has opened a review of all 14 suspicious deaths linked to Russia that a BuzzFeed News investigation exposed last year.
Read more: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/christopher-steele-mikhail-lesin-murder-putin-fbi?utm_term=.ihROnnANq#.doP0aaYwD
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link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Lesin
Lesin was found dead before noon on Thursday, November 5, 2015, in The Dupont Circle Hotel in Washington, D.C. He was found without any identification in a hotel room that was in his name. The original police report indicated an unknown victim in the room which was booked in his name. After much time, a member from the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., confirmed the identity of the individual as Mikhail Yuriyevich Lesin. A law enforcement official said there were no obvious signs of forced entry or foul play in his hotel room and that on the video surveillance, Lesin appeared disheveled when he returned to his hotel room. TASS reported that an early investigation did not find any signs of violent death, quoting a police spokesman, Sean Hickman, as saying security had not seen anything suspicious. The spokesman said the nature of the investigation could change, depending on what was found at the scene and after an examination of the body. On Friday, November 6, RIA Novosti reported that Lesin died of a heart attack citing a spokesman for the family as saying: "Today, Mikhail Lesin died ... His death came supposedly from a heart attack." Washington's Metropolitan Police Department opened a "death investigation". Russian officials worked with U.S. authorities to determine the circumstances of the death. On November 7, 2015, the Kremlin released official condolences from president Vladimir Putin: "The president appreciates the enormous contribution made by Mikhail Lesin to the formation of modern Russian media."
On March 10, 2016, Mashable stated that they had been informed by Beverly Fields that Lesin's cause of death was "blunt force injuries to the head," and that Lesin's body showed signs of "blunt force injuries of the neck, torso, upper extremities and lower extremities." During a March 10 press conference, LaShon Beamon, spokesperson for the department of forensic sciences in the medical examiner's office, and Hugh Carew, a spokesman for the police, released an official joint statement that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head but the manner of death was still classified as "undetermined." Dustin Sternbeck, Washington D.C. police department's chief spokesman, said that the case remains under investigation and would not say whether a crime may have been committed, "We're not willing to close off anything at this point."
On October 28, 2016, after a year-long investigation, Washington's chief medical examiner and federal authorities released a joint statement saying Lesin died of blunt-force trauma to his head, sustained in his hotel room induced by falls amid acute ethanol intoxication. The investigation found Lesin had been on a days-long alcohol bender, saying:
Mr. Lesin entered his hotel room on the morning of Nov. 4 … after days of excessive consumption of alcohol and sustained the injuries that resulted in his death while alone in his hotel room... [he] died as a result of blunt force injuries to his head, with contributing causes being blunt force injuries of the neck, torso, upper extremities, and lower extremities, which were induced by falls amid acute ethanol intoxication."
Lesin is buried in Los Angeles.
Note: for easier reading I have taken out the footnotes and bib. citations, but they are in the Wikipedia article in full.
Take a look at the Buzzfeed article, paragraph 6:
Now BuzzFeed News has established:
-Steele’s report says that Lesin was bludgeoned to death by enforcers working for an oligarch close to Putin, the four sources said.
-The thugs had been instructed to beat Lesin, not kill him, but they went too far, the sources said Steele wrote.
-Three of the sources said that the report described the killers as Russian state security agents moonlighting for the oligarch.
Also paragraphs 9 and 10:
But Steele’s report — the existence of which has never before been made public — adds to a mounting body of evidence that casts doubt on the official finding on Lesin’s death. “What I can tell you is that there isn’t a single person inside the bureau who believes this guy got drunk, fell down, and died,” an FBI agent told BuzzFeed News last year. “Everyone thinks he was whacked and that Putin or the Kremlin were behind it.”
In December, DC police released 58 pages of its case file on Lesin’s death. While many parts are blacked out, what was released says nothing about the blunt force injuries that killed Lesin — or even about him falling down, which is how he is supposed to have died.
